


The Scientific Method

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Love Confessions, Relationship Advice, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally’s desperate. He doesn’t know what to think about Artemis anymore. The only logical person to turn to for girl advice is Superboy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scientific Method

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torigates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/gifts).



> This was supposed to be done for Wally/Artemis week, but it's just a teensy bit late. Forgive me.  
> 

_I came down on a bottle rocket;_  
 _found my heart right where I locked it._  
 _Last night like rain on chalk;_  
 _it’s gone like money in my pocket._  
— The Weepies, “Keep It There”

▲▼▲

  
Wally West had always prided himself on being able to decipher generally everything. Sadly, Artemis Crock was not everything.  
  
Wally had also always prided himself on never having to ask for help from _anyone_. No physics problem nor calculus equation was too difficult for him to plow past on his own terms, and even the inscrutable species known as semicolons had succumbed to his mastery of all things in existence. But, again, Artemis was none of these things (he could draw _some_ similarities between her and semicolons – both of them were frustrating, strange, and largely useless), and maybe that was why he decided to throw in the towel on figuring her out.  
  
It was a vicious cycle, really: He would think he had her totally pegged; she would proceed to pull some sort of personality trump card that would throw all of his inferences on her out the nearest window; he would fume; she would smirk; he would find it bizarrely attractive, and then would hit himself, or ask Robin to hit him, and remember exactly how much he despised her every molecule.  
  
Tonight, he was at Stage Five: finding her bizarrely attractive. Not only had she decided to swipe his goggles following their latest mission (and remind Wally not to try running straight at Count Vertigo again) and teasingly call them a “souvenir,” but she had also thought it would be great to walk around the Cave in a pair of sweatpants and _his_ Flash t-shirt. _His_.  
  
And her hair was braided. It was diabolical.  
  
She was currently sitting between Robin and M’gann on the couch, intensely immersed in a round of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Robin, as Young Link, was dominating the fight, and M’gann’s Peach was dashing aimlessly around, tumbling off the edge of the stage of her own accord. Artemis, who had chosen to dress Zero-Suit Samus in green, was fighting toe-to-toe with Robin, and the score was close. And Wally didn’t know what to do with himself except stand in the kitchen and gawk at her with his spoon of ice cream halfway to his mouth.  
  
It was when said ice cream started melting that he knew it was the last straw.

▲▼▲

  
Superboy was in the gym when Wally found him, stumbling in and grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.  
  
“ _Help me_ ,” he moaned, loosening his grip and slowly, lamentably descending onto the floor on all fours.  
  
Superboy turned his attention away from the enforced punching bag he’d been attacking and raised an eyebrow at the prostrating speedster, raising an eyebrow and wiping his forehead with the crook of his elbow.  
  
“What?” he grunted, frowning skeptically.  
  
Wally raised his head pitifully.  
  
“Look, Supey,” he said sadly, clambering to his feet with his shoulders slumped. “You’re the only dude I can turn to in this dump who knows a _thing_ about the female species. And I’ve got a problem. A female problem. Well, no, I mean, the _problem_ is _a_ _female_ , like, the noun, not the adjective, and—”  
  
“What are you talking about,” Superboy asked, deadpan.  
  
Wally swallowed, attempting to gather his thoughts (which were behaving similarly to jumping beans, clattering against the corners of his skull). Finally, he inhaled deeply before speaking – rapidly.  
  
“So there’s this lady that I know and you know me I normally have like _zero_ trouble with the ladies but she’s driving me insane because _my ice cream melted_ and it’s horrible and you and M’gann have that _thing_ at least I think you have a thing I dunno based on the fact that I saw you guys making out I’m guessing you have a _thing_ but you seem super-informed on this crazy stuff because of said _thing_ and just oh god help me help me I don’t know what to _dooooo_ ,” he wailed, falling down onto the floor again.  
  
Superboy stared down at him in consternation, his eyebrows high and his mouth tilted in bewilderment. Wally was all but weeping on the hardwood floor, his head hanging miserably. After a moment of silence, and after waiting for Wally to stand up again with no success, he cleared his throat and cautiously nudged the speedster’s elbow with his toe.  
  
“Leave me to mourn alone,” Wally murmured sorrowfully.  
  
Superboy’s eyes went on a cynical spiral  
  
“I’m not _leaving_ ,” he growled. “You’re the one who came in here to talk to _me_ , genius.”  
  
Wally finally looked up at him, doing nothing short of pouting before he finally drew himself back up to his feet and pointed an accusatory finger at him.  
  
“Hey, when a bro comes to you for help, you _give_ it to him without a moment’s hesitation,” he declared. “We _talked_ about the Bro Code, Supey.” He abruptly took on an expression of panic and wilted. “Don’t tell me you already forgot.”  
  
Superboy rolled his eyes again and walked over to the towel rack.  
  
“No, I didn’t,” he grumbled, swiping a towel out of the pile and wiping the sweat from his face. “Like you’d let me.”  
  
“Okay, good. Don’t scare me like that; seriously,” Wally scolded him, trailing in his wake.  
  
“So, uh,” Superboy said hesitantly (as he often did when he was speaking to Wally), “I honestly couldn’t even tell what you were saying a second ago, so can you run it by me again?” He scowled. “In ten words or less?”  
  
Wally straightened, shoulders going stiff, and blatantly tried to keep his words at a normal speed. He raised one hand, counting off on his fingers.  
  
“I. Need. Some. Girl. Advice,” he recited carefully. “You. Understand. Girls. Please. Help.”  
  
Superboy let out an uncharacteristic snort to punctuate Wally’s sentence.  
  
“Me?” he asked skeptically. “Understand girls? Where’d you get _that_ idea?”  
  
“Dude, you have a _girlfriend_ ,” Wally exclaimed, throwing his arms out. “And she’s a total _babe_.” At the appearance of a dangerous glower from Superboy, he hastily appended, “A babe I will in no way pursue!”  
  
Superboy frowned, confused.  
  
“So...” he mused, and it began to dawn on him. “You... want me to... give you advice?”  
  
Wally grimaced as though Superboy had just mortally wounded him.  
  
“Tragically,” he said, “you’re my only hope.”  
  
Superboy’s eyes widened and he blinked blankly down at Wally, astounded.  
  
“ _You_ ,” he repeated. “ _You_ , the _Wall-man_ , are... coming to _me_ for advice.”  
  
“Don’t rub it in, Supey,” Wally grumbled, folding his arms and glaring down at the floor. “Look, I just figured... you’ve got a girlfriend, so you must know more about girls than anybody _else_ around here. Robin wouldn’t know a girl if she did a fan-dance with a lettuce leaf on the table in front of him, and Kaldur’s way too busy being _stoic_ or whatever to pay attention to stuff like that, and he’d probably just try to teach me some kind of weird Atlantean courting ritual, and let’s be honest, ew. No wonder he’s single.” He threw his head back with an enormous groan, slapping a hand to his forehead. “I can’t _believe_ I’m saying this.”  
  
“What do you even want to know about girls for?” Superboy asked, brow furrowed. “I thought you were... an expert, or whatever. Don’t you always say—?”  
  
“I know my motto, Supey, but it doesn’t apply here!” Wally snapped. “This – this girl, this infernal _female_ , is – an anomaly! So I figured, maybe I’m short on some knowledge that guys with girlfriends have, and you’ve got a pretty great track record, so...” He clasped his hands at his chin. “Help me?”  
  
Superboy considered him for a moment before shrugging apathetically and tossing the towel into a nearby hamper, heading for the exit.  
  
Wally followed him attentively.  
  
“Is that Supey-speak for yes?” he demanded, and Superboy huffed.  
  
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he grumbled. “What d’you want to know?”  
  
“ _Anything_ ,” Wally replied immediately, desperately, and the look in his green eyes was so pitiful that it nearly caused Superboy physical pain. He winced.  
  
“They, uh,” he grunted tersely. “They like... pretty things.”  
  
Wally blinked.  
  
“Really?” He sounded genuinely astounded by information that Superboy honestly thought was the most basic on the planet.  
  
“Um. Yeah.” He coughed. “And, uh, flowers.”  
  
Wally frowned, retreating into thought with one hand hovering pensively on his chin. Superboy knew that look. It usually appeared shortly before Wally built some kind of model rocket and shot it into the kitchen.  
  
“And stuff,” he added purposefully, hoping to rouse Wally out of his ponderings. Wally blinked as though startled and pounded his fist into his palm resolutely.  
  
“ _I have a plan_ ,” he declared histrionically.  
  
“Oh no,” Superboy muttered.  
  
Wally didn’t give him the chance to continue, however, dashing down the hallway leading back to the living room so quickly that a gust of wind burst out in his wake, blowing Superboy’s hair harum-scarum.  
  
 _What was that about?_ M’gann’s voice jounced up in his mind through their private link and he shook his head in exasperation.  
  
 _I dunno_ , he answered, cramming his hands into his pockets and lumbering toward the kitchen. _But I seriously hope it doesn’t happen ever again. Ever._

▲▼▲

  
When it comes to pretty things, Wally West is hardly an expert. Unless it’s pretty girls, but he can hardly give a pretty girl to Artemis as a gift. That would be creepy.  
  
He’s sitting in his room at the Cave one night, taking notes on a bacterial growth he’s been studying in his Petri dish. It’s late, and mostly everyone has gone to bed, but he can’t sleep (for reasons he’d rather not dwell upon for the sake of his own sanity).  
  
M’gann chooses that exact moment to float silently in, bobbing around behind him for a good few seconds before excitedly speaking.  
  
“Ooh, what is that?” she asks cheerfully, and Wally, having not heard her come in, yelps and throws his pen in the air in terror. M’gann’s smile fizzles. “Oh – oh, I’m sorry, Wally! I forgot! No floating! You’ll sneak up on people when you float. Hello, Megan!”  
  
She slaps her forehead in self-deprecation as Wally attempts to restore his heartbeat to normal.  
  
“I-It’s all good, Green Cheeks!” he croaks, clutching his chest. He recovers quickly and flashes her a grin that makes her smile weakly as she telepathically lifts the fallen pen from the floor and floats it back into his hand. “Thank you, babe! And _this_...” He gestures to the Petri dish. M’gann bounces over to get a better look. “Is just a little bacterial growth I’ve been cooking up! All in a day’s work.”  
  
“It’s so pretty!” M’gann squeals, marveling at the glimmering green growth beneath the glass.  
  
If light bulbs could literally materialize over one’s head, the space above Wally’s at that moment would house enough to blind a continent.

▲▼▲

  
Artemis was seated at the island in the middle of the kitchen, her feet dangling over the edge of the tall stool, begrudgingly slurping on the contents of a container of Cup Noodles. There was gauze wrapped tightly over her upper arm and her hair was braided, _again_. A gray sweatshirt was hung across the back of the chair.  
  
Wally loitered awkwardly in the doorway, concealing his offering to her behind his back, and chewed nervously on his lower lip. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been standing there, but he was fairly certain that it equated to the time needed for her to come in from her shower, scour the cabinets, find the Cup Noodles, and microwave them for three minutes.  
  
Normally, it didn’t take him that long to stroll into a room and interact with the opposite sex. But leave it to Artemis to be an aberration.  
  
“Are you gonna stand there all day, Wall-man, or did you come here for something?” she growled suddenly, prodding suspiciously at the contents of the styrofoam cup with her fork.  
  
Wally went rigid, standing up straight as if at attention. Curses. He’d been found out.  
  
“I, uh, just came in here to – eat!” he eked out stiffly. She finally turned her head towards him and raised one eyebrow, unimpressed. There was a noodle dangling from her lips that he tried desperately to ignore.  
  
“Funny; I’ve never seen anything stop you from doing _that_ before,” she said sarcastically, returning to her food with apathy.  
  
“Well,” Wally argued lamely, “I mean, _you’re_ here. I’d prefer to keep anything I consume in my stomach.”  
  
Artemis rolled her eyes with a sneer, and Wally could tell immediately that he had once again said entirely the wrong thing.  
  
“I brought you some bacteria!” he blurted out, far more loudly than he had intended.  
  
Artemis choked on her noodles. Wally took the opportunity while she was coughing to force himself to stride into the kitchen and stand at the other side of the table. She recovered quickly and shot him a look of incredulity.  
  
“Excuse me?” she said flatly. Wally blinked innocently at her.  
  
“And it’s pretty bacteria, too,” he added with pizazz, as though it was a special bonus to the whole affair. “I’ve been growing it in my room!”  
  
Honestly, Wally would have preferred amusement or ridicule to the expression that was currently stuck on Artemis’s face. She was leaning slowly away from him, palms flat on the surface of the island, frowning dubiously.  
  
“Did M’gann put something in those brownies she made for you this morning?” she inquired cautiously. Wally beamed senselessly at her.  
  
“Nnnnot that I’m aware of!” he replied enthusiastically. Artemis didn’t seem convinced.  
  
“Uh-huh,” she said, scooting the stool out and hopping off of it, taking the cup and the sweatshirt with her. “Well, um, enjoy that bacteria of yours. I’ll just be at the other end of the mountain, pretending this never happened. Kay?”  
  
With that, she turned sharply on her heel and began to stalk toward the hallway, pulling the sweatshirt on. Wally, in a moment of panic, zipped forward and grabbed her wrist without thinking.  
  
“Hold on!” he exclaimed. Her head whipped murderously around and he laughed nervously, releasing her. “Uh, please.”  
  
“Okay, what is _wrong_ with you?” she asked incredulously, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Do you have a fever or something?”  
  
 _Oh, boy, do I_ , Wally thought weakly.  
  
“Yes!” he replied. “Wait, no! Here!”  
  
He thrust the Petri dish toward her from behind his back, holding it directly under her nose. She glanced down at it, startled, going momentarily cross-eyed from the closeness before pushing his arm lower down to get a better look at what he was holding.  
  
Her eyes went instantly wide and her eyebrows rose considerably.  
  
The contents of the Petri dish were a bright, almost metallic green, crawling across the surface in shimmering lines, almost like moss. The colors shifted when she tilted the dish beneath the fluorescent light, flashing and fading like glass. Wally thumped his foot nervously.  
  
“Wow,” she finally said, and it sounded altogether more similar to an admission of defeat than a comment of admiration. “That’s... bacteria?”  
  
“Yep!” Wally cried happily as she carefully took the dish from his open palms. “Escherichia coli grown on EMB Agar by yours truly!”  
  
Whatever wonder Artemis may have possessed was instantly eradicated by that sentence. Her eyebrows dropped until they were practically horizontal across her eyes and she looked up at him dully.  
  
“That’s... fascinating,” she decided, handing the dish back to him. Wally drooped miserably in response, shoulders sagging. “Thanks for the show-and-tell. You’ve been a... delight.”  
  
One of Artemis’s primary virtues was her crippling inability to lie. However, this did little to enthuse Wally as she gave the dish (and him) one last skeptical look before resuming her trek to the hallways.  
  
“Ack – wait!” he squawked, grabbing her wrist again. She huffed and wrenched herself out of his grip immediately, turning back to him with her hands on her hips, looking drastically tried for patience. Wally gulped and held out the dish to her again, attempting to wrestle some seriousness onto his face. “Didn’t you hear me when I said it was for you, she-devil?”  
  
Artemis’s features loosened in something equal to light surprise.  
  
“I, uh...” she mumbled. “I thought you were joking.” She hardened again. “What’re you giving it to me for? Hoping I’ll be contaminated?”  
  
“That would be a great bonus, yes,” Wally riposted without thinking. “Wait, no!” He backpedaled hastily. “Because it’s green! Like you! I mean, like your costume!”  
  
“I think we need to get you a one-way ticket to the med bay,” Artemis quipped. “Or Arkham Asylum.”  
  
“Very funny,” Wally pouted. “I’m trying to be nice and this is how you repay me?”  
  
“Wally, you’re trying to give me _bacteria_ ,” Artemis retorted.  
  
“But it’s _pretty_ bacteria!” he defended, pointing a finger in the air for emphasis. Artemis groaned and threw her head back, looking to the heavens as if in hopes that they would grant her patience.  
  
“That’s great and all, but I’m not really big on the _pretty_ ,” she riposted curtly. “Especially not when it’s... you know, some kind of prokaryotes.”  
  
“Well, these aren’t exactly prokaryotes—” Wally started to say, but Artemis threw her hands in the air to silence him.  
  
“Please spare me!” she begged him belligerently, sighing. “Is this some kind of a joke? Did M’gann put you up to this?”  
  
Wally stared dumbly at her.  
  
“Um,” he said slowly, “not... _directly_...”  
  
“I knew it!” Artemis yelled, pounding a fist into her palm. “Ugh, I am _so_ going to get her for this. I _told_ her not to manipulate the weak-minded; it’s—”  
  
“Do you want it or not?” Wally demanded very suddenly, feeling his stomach tighten uncomfortably.  
  
He fixed his gaze adamantly with hers, still holding the Petri dish in his upturned palms as if it were a delicate artifact. She returned the expression for the briefest of moments before exhaling in something like defeat, reaching forward and snatching it from his hands.  
  
“You won’t shut up about it if I don’t, so I guess I don’t really have a choice,” she growled, placing it carefully in the pocket of the oversized sweatshirt (again— _his_. Where was she _getting_ these?!).  
  
He grinned satisfactorily at her, which only seemed to make her more annoyed.  
  
“But you’re still a geek,” she snarled. “And you’re still weird. And if you try something like this again, I won’t be so nice. Got that?”  
  
“We’ll see about that,” Wally bandied back confidently.  
  
Artemis shook her head at him and continued her journey to the living quarters with her hands fisted at her sides. Wally watched her go without looking away.  
  
She paused in the doorway on the other side of the living room and put one hand on the frame, looking back over her shoulder at him with an unreadable expression.  
  
“What’s the occasion?” she asked hesitantly.  
  
Wally gulped. He hadn’t calculated the possibility of having to explain himself.  
  
“Uh, to – celebrate how much I – hate you!” he babbled back thoughtlessly. “I mean, wait, no, I withdraw that! To celebrate how – blonde your hair is! No! Six more weeks of winter! No! Wait! Give me a minute! Tooo...”  
  
Artemis was already gone, and when Wally finally came up with a straight answer, the only one who heard it said to the wall was Robin, who had been lurking in the background and eavesdropping the entire time.  
  
Wally didn’t give him long to cackle before leaping for his throat.

▲▼▲

  
“You said they like flowers, right?!” Wally demanded desperately of Superboy, who had been asleep on the couch only moments ago. Superboy let out a strangled yell of surprise and instinctively punched the air, narrowly missing Wally’s nose. “Whoa, calm down! I’m unarmed!”  
  
“What do you _want_?” Superboy growled flatly after he had regained his composure, sitting up on the couch and crossing his arms grumpily.  
  
“I need more – uh, advice,” Wally eked out painfully, one eye tightly closed. Superboy sighed enormously, dropping his head into his hands. “The bacteria was a failure. Well, not a _failure_ ; I mean, she took it, but she didn’t exactly fall into my arms or anything—”  
  
“Why don’t you just tell her you like her?” Superboy grumbled, glowering up at Wally pointedly. Wally straightened under his glare and glanced around surreptitiously as if thinking he’d find the answer plastered onto the wall.  
  
“Because… that… would….” Wally struggled with the words, fiddling with his fingers. “Beeeee… too forward! Uh, it would be embarrassing! She wouldn’t understand! She’d blow me off!”  
  
“You know, I think you have a higher chance of being blown off if you try to tell her you like her by giving her _bacteria_ ; I’m just saying,” Superboy huffed, reclining back on the couch again.  
  
“I never even _said_ I liked her!” Wally protested clumsily. Superboy let out an uncharacteristic snort of laughter.  
  
“You said you didn’t know what to do about her,” he said. “That sounds like liking someone to me.”  
  
Wally’s cheeks reddened considerably.  
  
“Plus, after the exercise—” Superboy started to say.  
  
“Okay, no; line officially crossed right there,” Wally interrupted harshly.  
  
Superboy softened and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was starting to get a headache.  
  
“Just – yes, they like flowers, okay? Leave me alone,” he growled, throwing a hand in the air for emphasis.  
  
“Thank you. You’re my savior,” Wally declared histrionically, and Superboy was about to yell at him to go away, but he’d already zipped out of the room toward the zeta tubes, leaving a gust of wind behind in his wake.  
  
“No running indoors,” Superboy mumbled wearily before rolling over to sleep.

▲▼▲

  
It took Wally considerably more time than he had intended to figure out exactly what kind of flowers to get for Artemis.  
  
He cycled through so many different types and spent so much time hovering around the florist’s shop downtown that he was sure that if he had to look at anymore flowers, he would turn into one himself.  
  
He went through a great deal of painstaking research at that shop – such a great deal, in fact, that the florist herself was past the point of patience.  
  
“Oh, look, the lovelorn botanist,” she called out sarcastically when Wally shuffled in for the sixth time that weekend. “You gonna _buy_ anything this time?”  
  
“Possibly,” Wally replied distantly, investigating the lilies. “Anything new, babe?”  
  
“Don’t start with me on that ‘babe’ stuff; I’m twenty-seven,” the florist huffed. “Anyway, we just got a new shipment of tiger lilies; they’re on your left.”  
  
Wally hardly heard her. His attention had been irrevocably caught by the vivid orange petals exploding out from a black tub near the tulips. They were adamant and bright and they seemed so beautifully aggressive – and he realized that a thing so like Artemis could not be passed up.  
  
“I’ll take these,” he exclaimed far more loudly than he’d wanted to, and he accidentally super-sped up to the counter with the entire bundle of flowers in his arms. Thankfully, the florist had had her back turned.  
  
She whipped around at the sound of his shouting, her eyebrows high.  
  
“ _All_ of them?” she asked incredulously. Wally gave a short, decisive nod, but most of his face was obscured behind the blossoms.  
  
After a pause, the florist shook her head and sighed, taking the tiger lilies and carrying them over to the sink, snipping the ends of the stems off and preparing to tie them into a bouquet.  
  
“You must be really nuts about this girl,” she muttered dryly. “Wish _my_ boyfriend paid this much attention to me.”  
  
“Yes on the nuts; no on the boyfriend,” Wally corrected her hastily.  
  
She looked considerably surprised, but said no more.

▲▼▲

  
Wally found her in her room, shockingly enough.  
  
Out of all of them, Artemis probably spent the least amount of time at the Cave. Usually, she would go home no matter how late they returned from a mission. The only person who could ever convince her to stay was Robin, and it was often after a little “private talk” by the zeta tubes.  
  
For a while after the exercise, she’d spent every night there, but eventually, she stopped.  
  
She spent so little time at the Cave, in fact, that her room was largely bare. She was sitting with her back to him, lit only by her disk lamp, in a white tank top and sweatpants with her hair braided _again_. She was hunched over, resting her feet on the legs of the swivel chair, scribbling something into a notebook and periodically checking a paper beside her.  
  
Wally gulped, clutching the bouquet for dear life. He didn’t know where he mustered the strength to use words, but they were coming out, so he rolled with it.  
  
“Do you like flowers?” he barked. “I like flowers.”  
  
“Fascinating factoid of the day,” Artemis muttered cynically without turning around. “I feel so much closer to knowing the secret of life now that you’ve told me you like flowers.”  
  
Wally ignored her, walking cautiously in until he was behind her, peering over her shoulder at the papers on her desk.  
  
“Whatcha workin’ on?” he asked nonchalantly. Her shoulders tightened, possibly out of frustration, but she let out a grumble and answered him.  
  
“French homework.” She dropped her pen down and scratched at her head, stretching. One of her errant hands bumped into the bouquet and she jumped, finally turning around to look at him, only to be met with a thick arrangement of tiger lilies.  
  
“What the f—”  
  
“Flowers,” Wally announced, extending them to her. “Fresh outta the florist’s. Well, I dunno, fresh out of wherever the florist gets them from. Where _do_ they get them from? Is there, like, a flower store somewhere, or—?”  
  
“Yes, Wally, and that flower store is called the florist’s,” Artemis deadpanned.  
  
“Well, does the florist have a florist? Do they have to pick them themselves? This is a serious logical question.” He paused, realizing that he was rambling, and shoved the flowers closer to her. “They were the angriest looking flowers there, soooo... for you!”  
  
Artemis’s expression burst into one of shock, her eyes round and her eyebrows furrowed. Wally made his best attempt at a flourish and wound up accidentally smacking the bouquet.  
  
“Whoops,” he mumbled, looking genuinely surprised. Artemis still hadn’t reacted, which prompted him to ask, “Do you want them or not? I got these for you out of the goodness of my—”  
  
Artemis turned sharply around, picking up her pen in one stiff motion and bending over.  
  
“Give them to M’gann or something,” she said snidely. “I don’t like flowers. It’s stupid trying to keep them from dying, and I don’t like seeing them turning all brown.”  
  
“They’re not _for_ M’gann,” Wally explained evenly, shocked at his sudden eloquence, such a stark contrast to his babbling with the bacteria. “They’re for you, and—”  
  
“I don’t want them,” Artemis interrupted quietly.  
  
“But they’re pretty!” Wally protested.  
  
“Just – I don’t _want them_!” she snapped. Though the light was feeble, Wally thought he saw her cheeks reddening. “Now leave me alone! I’m working.”  
  
Wally sent a dejected glance at the flowers before turning around sharply on his heel and striding out of the room without a word. A few moments after he was gone, Artemis stopped writing (nothing) and dropped the pen, lifting her head to stare at the wall. She closed her eyes, her forehead tight, and lightly rested her fingers on her temple, sighing.  
  
“Moron,” she whispered. “I’m allergic to lilies. And you’re not allowed to do this.”  
  
She dropped her forehead onto the surface of her desk, sighing.  
  
“You’re not. You’re not.”

▲▼▲

  
Wally showed the flowers to M’gann with a dull and distant expression, and she smiled gleefully, finding a vase for them and setting them on the kitchen table as a centerpiece.  
  
By the next morning, they were gone. The only person who didn’t have a good idea of where they’d been taken was Wally, who hardly noticed their absence anyway – not even when Artemis spent the next week or so sneezing without reprieve.

▲▼▲

  
“You asked for movies. M’gann likes this one,” Superboy grumbles cantankerously as he tosses the DVD onto the coffee table.  
  
Wally marvels at it – at the image on the cover of a dark-haired young man in a drooping brown coat holding a boom box above his head.  
  
“Say Anything?” he asks, reading the title curiously.  
  
Superboy nods distractedly, already heading down the hallway toward the gym.  
  
“Mostly, if it was made in the eighties, girls like it,” Superboy grunts, voice echoing. “It’s really corny, though. Just warning you.”  
  
“I can get back into corny,” Wally mutters to no one in particular. He hops off the couch and pops the disc into the DVD player without a moment’s hesitation.

▲▼▲

  
Artemis is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of garbage cans being knocked over outside. She groans, rolling over onto her back, and scowls at the ceiling – if one of Mrs. Kowalski’s stupid, clumsy cats is responsible for waking her up again, she’ll flip a table.  
  
She’s just about to pull the covers up over her head and try to get back to sleep when she hears it.  
  
Music.

▲▼▲

  
Wally had never really thought about exactly how uncomfortable it was to hold a boom box in the air for five minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Especially in the late-night humidity of Gotham City. Especially when he was hungry. Especially after he had _carried_ said boom box for every mile between the sidewalk outside this apartment complex and his house in Central City. Especially when he is growing progressively more mortified with every second that the third-story window he was aiming at doesn’t open.  
  
He maneuvers his hand over to the volume knob and turns it all the way up. The song’s opening melody blasts relentlessly out into the previously quiet night.  
  
Finally, mercifully, a figure appears behind the closed window and pushes it open.  
  
Artemis pokes her head and shoulders grumpily out, resting her elbows on the sill, and notices him standing on the sidewalk with the boom box proudly thrust into the air.  
  
Her eyes go wide and Wally grins enthusiastically at her, winking.  
  
“ _Love_ ,” Peter Gabriel sings, his voice crackling out from the speakers of the boom box. “ _I get so lost sometimes. Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart. When I want to run away, I drive off in my car. But whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are._ ”  
  
“Are you _kidding me_?” Artemis yells, but Wally can’t hear her over the sound of the music. Incidentally, he also can’t feel his upper arms anymore.  
  
“ _All my instincts – they return. The grand façade so soon will burn. Without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside_ …”  
  
Wally only then notices exactly what he’s doing. Maybe it’s the way Artemis is looking at him – with her eyebrows smashed together and her eyes round and her lips tight – but he abruptly awakens to the fact that he is standing outside her apartment, playing Peter Gabriel on Uncle Barry’s old boom box from the eighties, in the hopes that it will somehow woo her the way it did to the girl in that one movie with John Cusack that he’d just watched.  
  
“ _In your eyes, the light, the heat—_ ”  
  
“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” he shouts to her, still beaming. “Also, I think my arms are about to fall off!”  
  
“ _In your eyes, I am complete_ —”  
  
“You’ve lost your mind!” Artemis shrieks back, looking increasingly panicked. “It’s official!”  
  
“ _In your eyes, I see the doorway_ —”  
  
“It works in the movies!” Wally replies as loudly as he can, but Artemis clearly can’t understand what he’s saying. “It’s _foolproof_!”  
  
“ _Of a thousand churches_ —”  
  
“I figured that since the flowers didn’t work,” Wally bellows, his voice cracking. Artemis frowns at him and shakes her head, pointing to her ear and shrugging.  
  
“ _In your eyes, the resolution of all the fruitless searches_ —”  
  
“Do I need to call the cops?!” she yells down at him, and he only hears the last word of her sentence. He feverishly shakes his head.  
  
“Last I heard!” he attempts to retort over the deafening volume of the music. “Mimicking 80s movies! Is legal! So…!”  
  
“ _Oh, I see the light and the heat. Oh, I wanna be that complete! I wanna touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes_.”  
  
“LEAVE!” Artemis screams at the absolute peak power of her lungs, and Wally definitely hears that part. Before he can reply, she has whirled around and stormed out of view, retreating back into her room.  
  
Wally sighs and starts to lower the boom box in dejection, but he stops when he notices that Artemis, despite being gone, hasn’t closed the window.  
  
It takes him a moment to understand, but when he does, he smiles without restraint and raises the boom box again, not caring that his arms are so stiff he can’t move them when the song finally ends.  
  
 _Progress_.

▲▼▲

  
“How’d you and M’gann get together?” Wally asked Superboy through a mouthful of Hot Pocket a few days later. Superboy was seated on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, watching No Signal.  
  
He was silent for a moment, and Wally started to doubt whether or not the other boy had heard him, but eventually, he spoke.  
  
“I thought she was going to die,” he whispered. “And I thought it was my fault.”  
  
Wally opened his mouth in shock, wondering when the hell _this_ happened, but chose to shut it when Superboy continued to speak.  
  
“And I realized that I couldn’t—” Wally could see no change in expression, but Superboy’s head was bowed. “— _Work_... without her. I couldn’t... _be_. And that little space inside my head where she always was, maybe by accident – it was so empty. And I wanted her back there.” He swallowed thickly, and his tone lightened slightly. “But she was okay. She – came back. And I... took a chance.”  
  
“A chance?” Wally repeated, befuddled.  
  
Superboy nodded slowly.  
  
“I decided it would be dumb to be afraid anymore,” he said. “She’d always been there. Always. And I was just so _happy_ that I’d figured it out without having to lose her, and I just – I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say except by...”  
  
Wally frowned as the other boy’s sentence faded, lost. Superboy stood, cracked his neck.  
  
“I’m hungry,” he grunted. “Get out of the kitchen; I need it for a minute.”  
  
Wally obliged him without a word. Just before he exited the kitchen area, however, Superboy said something that made him freeze.  
  
“Tell her the truth. Just tell her the truth.”  
  
Wally didn’t reply. Later, when he was up at eleven at night and walking down the hallway toward his room and saw them kissing softly in the dim light of her room, he didn’t feel sad. He smiled – tiredly, understandingly – and went on his way.

▲▼▲

  
He doesn’t know why he hadn’t figured it out sooner.  
  
He probably never will.  
  
The point is that he’s going for a run on the beach at sundown on Friday night, and he has an epiphany. He looks at the emerging stars and the weathered sea and he realizes that there’s only one way left to do this; there’s only one way that he _can_ do it anymore.  
  
His way.

▲▼▲

  
“Hey, are you free?”  
  
Artemis frowned at the sound of Wally’s excited voice in the speaker of her battered cell phone, holding it to her ear with her elbow as she tied up her hair.  
  
“It’s a free country and I’m living in it, so...” she quipped.  
  
“I meant are you free to hang out,” Wally emphasized bluntly. Artemis’s hands temporarily stopped moving around in her hair and she considered him. She was beyond tempted to give him a snarky retort that would end in her hanging up at precisely the right moment, but something about the tone of his voice stopped her.  
  
“Um... I don’t know,” she said with surprising honesty even for herself. She glanced over her shoulder as if afraid that her mother would be sitting in the doorway of her bedroom and listening. “It’s... kinda late...”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And I can’t exactly – get a ride...”  
  
“Zeta tubes, genius,” Wally reminded her. She blinked.  
  
“Oh. I, uh... I guess.” She chewed her lip slightly. “Why do you ask?”  
  
“Jeez, are you free or not?” he demanded in exasperation (a clever way to mask the fact that his hands were shaking). “I don’t have all day. Uh, night. Uh...”  
  
Artemis sighed.  
  
“I’ll be there in ten,” she muttered. “But this had _better_ be worth it.”

▲▼▲

  
Artemis wouldn’t admit it out loud even on her death bed, but it was worth it tenfold.  
  
When she finally stalked into the living room from the zeta tubes with her arms resolutely folded, Wally was waiting for her in the kitchen. He leaped off of the stool he’d been perched on and stood at attention as she walked by. She scowled up at him.  
  
“If I came all the way over here for nothing, I’m going to kill you,” she groused, starting to shed her coat and hang it on the back of the couch.  
  
“Uh... might wanna leave that on,” Wally told her suddenly. She raised an eyebrow in response but dubiously shouldered it back on, staring over her shoulder at him.  
  
“What for?” she demanded.  
  
“Well.” Wally blinked blankly at her as if he’d entirely forgotten the answer to her question. She tapped her foot impatiently and he finally recovered. “If you can put your faith in me for just, like, five minutes, I swear I’ll—”  
  
“You know, standing here and rambling at me isn’t helping your cause,” she said, partially joking and partially vexed. “Is that what you do to pick up chicks? Really? You _talk_ at them?”  
  
She paused.  
  
“That was a rhetorical question,” she added dully. Wally bristled, scowling.  
  
“You’re one to talk about – about _talking_ ,” he retorted lamely. He noticed that Artemis was growing rapidly tried for patience and attempted to put aside all compulsions to challenge her, starting toward the back exit toward the beach and beckoning for her to follow. After a moment, she obliged him.  
  
The two walked in relative silence, with Artemis striding about two steps behind Wally all the way out the back door and down the sandy path leading to the shore. It was completely dark outside (there was no moon), but shockingly clear – Wally silently thanked any omnipotent source that may or may not exist for miraculously keeping out the Happy Harbor fog. The sand was practically white under their slipping feet as they picked their way down the pathway.  
  
Wally wasn’t sure if he wished she would say something or not. He could hardly dredge up the intrepidity to initiate conversation, but in some ways, he was thankful that she was keeping her mouth shut. For the time being, anyway. Honestly, if she decided to speak, he’d probably collapse before he could thing of anything to say.  
  
Eventually (inevitably, finally), he came to a halt and Artemis followed suit. The tide was quiet around them, and Wally was grateful for the darkness to hide the obnoxious warmth >:C of his cheeks.  
  
“What... is _this_ ,” Artemis finally deadpanned, apparently galvanized into speaking.  
  
“It is a blanket,” Wally said decisively, satisfied at his correct definition. Artemis, however, didn’t seem to have benefited from his exposition.  
  
“And, uh, why is it here?” Artemis prodded him, drawing out the words for emphasis. There was such heavy skepticism in her voice that Wally thought it might destroy it.  
  
Wally gestured helplessly at it in what he hoped could convey his intentions. Judging by Artemis’s horrified expression, it didn’t work.  
  
“I am _not_ going to lie down on a blanket with you on a beach in the dead of night!” she shrieked. “Wally, I hope you know that I can break your face in, like, twenty different ways, and—”  
  
“Oh, for the love of – calm down!” Wally yelped, waving his arms around to silence her. She pursed her lips at him with dangerously narrowed eyes. “Look, _fine_ ; if it makes you feel any better, I’ll go...” He strode past the blanket, a couple of feet away, and plopped down in the sand. “Lie down over here. Cold and alone.”  
  
“Good,” she spat, still sounding somewhat terrified and somewhat bewildered and somewhat irked. The usual. After a moment’s tense pause, she cautiously shuffled to the blanket and sat gingerly down on it. It took another good few seconds for her to lie on her back, but she did.  
  
“Why’d you bring me down here?” she demanded, then winced at the harshness of her words before uttering them more calmly. “Wally, why’d you bring me down here?”  
  
“Just look,” Wally told her. She stared up at the night sky, and Wally, noting her distraction, glanced over at her. Her hair was splayed out over the surface of the blanket, twisting out into the sand. He could hardly see her face but for the familiar profile.  
  
“Uh... what am I supposed to be seeing here?” she asked him. He snorted.  
  
“Well, Artemis, those are called _stars_ ,” he began in a babying voice, and she flung a handful of sand at him.  
  
“I know what stars are, stupid!” she snapped. “I just don’t know why you’re telling me to look at them!” Wally opened his mouth to answer, but she pointed a threatening finger at him. “And if you say it’s because they’re _pretty_ , I’m going to kill you.”  
  
“Curses,” Wally grumbled. “Foiled again.”  
  
Artemis let out a huff, crossing her arms tightly over her chest and glowering up at the sky. Wally surreptitiously snuck a look at her again.  
  
“Quit staring,” she muttered. “We’re out here to look at the stars, so look at the stars.”  
  
Wally felt _so tempted_ to say that he already was, but that was more of the corniness he’d use on any passing pretty girl, so he bit his tongue and stayed quiet.  
  
“I don’t get stars,” Artemis said suddenly. Wally didn’t respond. “There are so many of them, and some of them aren’t even there anymore. How do people keep track of the names of all of them, anyway? They all look the same. They don’t mean anything.”  
  
“That’s blasphemy!” Wally shouted, and it echoed against the rocks, making him wince. “Uh, I mean... stars are great.”  
  
“Right,” Artemis replied, not sounding convinced at all.  
  
“Look, see that constellation over there?” Wally asked, pointing, trying to keep her attention. “That’s Orion.”  
  
“It just looks like a bunch of stars to me,” Artemis muttered, sounding far too bitter to be passive.  
  
“Well... no, see, there’s his arm, and there’s...” He trailed off, noticing that his attempts to trace the constellation had resulted in him leaning over, propped up on his free arm. He was far too close to her to be comfortable and quickly withdrew. “And – and – uh, there’s Sirius, over there, and – oh, look, there’s Castor and Pollux!”  
  
“How do you know all of these?” Artemis asked, and she sounded vaguely interested, vaguely amazed. Wally beamed.  
  
“My Uncle Barry got me a telescope when I was six,” he replied. “And it came with this chart of all the stars and constellations and I memorized it.”  
  
“It’s all in your head?” Artemis was astounded. Wally confessed that it made his pride swell.  
  
“Well, yeah, but that map was a little outdated, so I’ve been looking at new ones... I would’ve brought my telescope down here, but – figured we’d start with the basics.”  
  
“The basics? Is there a process for this or something?” Artemis snorted. She pointed to a cluster of stars further away. “I know that one. The Big Spoon Thing.”  
  
“The Big _Dipper_ ,” Wally corrected her, relishing the thought that she was wrong about something.  
  
“That’s what I said; the Big I Don’t Care,” Artemis riposted, putting her arms behind her head. “Okay, Wall-man; I’ll humor you. What’s... that one?”  
  
She pointed. Wally leaned over again, following the gesture, and she didn’t seem to notice.  
  
“Lyra,” he answered. “The Harp.”  
  
“And that one?”  
  
“Perseus. The Hero.”  
  
“That one?”  
  
“Coma Berenices,” Wally replied with an amused grin. “Berenice’s Hair.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Artemis permitted herself a laugh, and it was light and blew away with the sea. “There was a lady who got a constellation named after her _hair_?”  
  
“Don’t sound so skeptical, Rapunzel!” Wally jibed, and she elbowed him, knocking him over again. When he had righted himself again, he noticed she was frowning.  
  
“What’s that star?” she asked. “Right there, over Berenice’s Hair.”  
  
Wally followed the line of her arm and finger and spotted what she was indicating: a bright, almost glittering star, hard in the sky against the others. It practically outshone them altogether.  
  
“That?” Wally’s brow furrowed, an a feeling of utter consternation crashed into him. He had scoured maps of the skies for years, and he had never seen that star on any of them before. His mind desperately raced through all available data, and came up empty.  
  
“That’s Artemis,” he heard himself say.  
  
He felt Artemis turn her head to stare up at him in either horror or flabbergastedness.  
  
“Liar,” she said. “There is _not_ a star called Artemis.”  
  
Wally looked down at her and froze. He hadn’t noticed exactly how close they’d gotten while he’d been gesticulating like a madman at the stars, but now, with his head turned toward hers, they were perhaps inches apart. Artemis was looking him in the eye and he felt like he was about to choke, because there was some sand on her cheek and in her hair and her cheeks seemed flushed in the darkness, and she was blinking expectantly up at him with that signature _Artemis_ look on her face, and he didn’t quite know what he wanted to do or what he thought made sense.  
  
“There is now,” he murmured, and he was leaning down before he even knew what he was doing. Artemis closed her eyes.  
  
“Team, report to mission room.” Wally let out a yelp at the sound of Batman’s severe voice in his communicator, and Artemis was so startled that she jerked up and smashed her forehead into his nose by accident. Wally reeled back, plopping down onto the sand with a squawk of indignation.  
  
“Ugh, we’ll be right there,” Artemis muttered, pressing two fingers into her ear. Wally was still recovering. “Come on, Wall-man. One does not simply keep the Batman waiting.”  
  
“I think you broke my nose,” Wally whimpered, stumbling to his feet.  
  
“Serves you right,” Artemis replied breezily, already heading back to the path. Wally had to run to catch up to her.  
  
Robin giggled ridiculously when they came in together, Wally still clutching his nose as though it was an openly bleeding wound.  
  
“What took you so long?” Superboy grunted, but there was a knowing glint in his eyes that frankly unnerved Wally. M’gann winked at Artemis, who looked affronted.  
  
“I don’t think,” Wally said, his voice muffled behind his hand, “that I’m fit for combat in this current state, and—”  
  
“If you two are finished,” Batman interjected, and everyone straightened. “You’ll be deploying to Santa Prisca first thing in the morning.”

▲▼▲

  
Wally hardly thought it would make her angry when he decided to watch out for her during the fight against some of Cobra’s henchmen in the Santa Priscan jungle. He _also_ hardly thought that it would make her fly off the handle when he complimented her technique or referred to her as Beautiful. But it did regardless.  
  
"Why do you keep doing this?!" Artemis demanded furiously, smashing a thug in the face with the butt of her bow. "Why do you keep pushing all of this weird sappy junk?! First the bacteria, then the _flowers_ , then the _boom box_ and the stars and now _this_!" She whirled and roundhouse-kicked another henchman in the gut, knocking him down. There was mud caked in the ends of her hair. “Why, Wally?! Why?!”  
  
"Because I like you! Okay?!" Wally shouted in response in a wild outburst, leaping in the air and spinning to kick two thugs on either side of him down. He landed on his feet and ducked backwards to avoid a swinging fist from another goon. "I like you a lot, actually!" he continued, grabbing one thug by the wrist when he lunged at him and yanking him forward before elbowing him in the back. "Like, significantly more than could be considered normal! Like, way off the charts liking!" He dodged another few swings before finally sneaking in a swift uppercut that bowled the henchman clean over. "Like, I feel this sudden compulsion to kiss you at any given time! It's really annoying!" He sped around another two thugs and knocked their heads together. "But I've learned to deal! So should you!"  
  
"Deal with _what_?!" Artemis shrieked, sounding uncharacteristically panicked as she leapt above a henchman's kicking foot and punched him in the face before hitting the muddy ground again.  
  
"With wanting to kiss _me_ , obviously!" Wally replied, swiftly assaulting the thug in front of him with his blurring fists until the man collapsed. "Look, I asked Supey for advice a few days ago and he told me girls like pretty things and he's got a girlfriend so I trusted his word!"  
  
Artemis was still fiercely engaged in combat, grunting and growling like a mountain lion as she fended off the last few henchmen.  
  
"And for the record!" Wally added when he concluded that there were no more thugs around him and loosened, standing up straight and putting up one finger for emphasis. "I think you look _inhumanly attractive_ when you're in the middle of a fi—"  
  
He would have finished his sentence winningly if there hadn't been a blow to the back of his head that snapped his vision into sharp, temple-cutting black and sent him crumpling down onto the marshy ground.

▲▼▲

  
As far as things to wake up to went, a severely disheveled and sleep-deprived and cranky-looking Artemis sitting in a chair in front of him wasn't so bad.  
  
Wally let out an audible groan as his senses rapidly returned to him, grimacing at the sharp pain that was throbbing through the base of his skull. The dim natural lighting and the lack of any immediately visible white things and the familiar smell of his own dirty socks was enough to assure him that he wasn't in the medical bay, so hopefully, whatever injuries he seemed to have were minor. Either that, or Artemis deliberately carried him away from the world of medicine and trapped him here, watching him slowly deteriorate into oblivion.  
  
He was hoping for the first option.  
  
"Did I win?" he asked woozily, feeling a stupid grin rising on his face. Artemis's expression – sour and severe and borderline homicidal – did not change.  
  
"You _moron_ ," she snarled vitriolically. Wally shrugged.  
  
"I've been called worse," he said. "It sounds so nice when you say it. Except not."  
  
With a wince, he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. Artemis did not protest. He felt an uncomfortable pressure in his head at the new elevation, but it quickly ebbed, and he turned his head toward the sitting girl beside his bed and smiled.  
  
"How long have I been out? Days? Weeks?"  
  
"Like four hours," Artemis snapped back. "Don't look so proud of yourself; we were worried sick. I think M'gann was about to crash the bioship; she kept looking over her shoulder to see if you were okay in the back."  
  
"See? I knew she couldn't deny her feelings for me," Wally joked, and he didn't expect that Artemis would react the way she did.  
  
"Make up your mind, Wally!" she yelled very suddenly, her husky voice cracking with effort. Wally blinked widely and only then began to take in the dark circles under her eyes, the large white bandage wrapped around her entire upper arm, the bizarre but noticeable presence of worry in the corners of her eyes.  
  
He gulped.  
  
"Um… make up my mind about… what…?" he asked cluelessly, tilting his mouth in confusion. Artemis let out a loud groan and threw her hands in the air dramatically.  
  
"One second it's _me_ and the next second it's M'gann," she explained tersely. "You can't have two at once, Wally. Make up your _mind_."  
  
Wally opened his mouth to say something, but Artemis threw up a hand to silence him.  
  
"Because – because if what you said in the marsh is true, then – then don't mess around about it," she continued. Her voice was hard and her eyes were focused on a candy wrapper on his floor. "I'm not… just somebody you can screw around with, and if this is a prank—"  
  
"I promise it isn't," Wally interjected hastily, his words stumbling over each other. Artemis stopped speaking, but her eyes didn't stray towards his. "No, you have _no idea_ how obnoxious this is. I can't even _think straight_ when you're around. Like, _what_? What the heck are you doing to me? I'll bet it's illegal in some states. Insensitive attractiveness."  
  
"You're rambling," Artemis mumbled, and Wally wasn't sure if that peculiar tone of her voice was one of fondness or of annoyance. He gulped again.  
  
"And I've just been trying to figure out—" He halted, trying to think of the right words. "Why I want to – kiss you all the time. Or spend all day with you. Or something really gross like that. Maybe it was the exercise; I don't know, but the point is that I think I…"  
  
Artemis's face had hardened at the words "the exercise," and Wally's gut had been momentarily clawed at; now she was clenching her fists and her knuckles were white and her hands were shaking.  
  
"Artemis, I think I…" Wally whispered, and, just like that, the words were lost. The last of his sentence trailed off into quiet.  
  
She wasn’t looking at him anymore.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said after a minute or so, and he had no idea why.  
  
Artemis released her fists and the action was almost cathartic to Wally, because the rest of her demeanor and muscles unraveled around it into a loosened state. Her ponytail was still dirty, he noticed. Her lips were drier than usual, and red from being chewed. He wasn't sure why he hadn't observed it before, but she was still in her costume – her dirty, torn costume. Her cowl hung at the back of her head like a hood, gathered under the weight of her ponytail.  
  
"You should be," she finally rasped out, and she reached one hand over and placed it on top of his. The callouses on her palms and in between her fingers were warm and sharp and grazed his skin like pebbles and she lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.  
  
Wally didn't know how he wound up kissing her. He wasn't sure whether it was her doing or his, but what he did know was that Artemis smelled like a musty forest floor and yesterday's shampoo and a little bit of paprika. She didn't move much when he kissed her; she just closed her eyes to the feel of his hands on either side of her face and fisted her fingers in the hem of his shirt, and Wally wasn't sure if, by the time they separated and touched forehead and she put her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, she was crying or not.  
  
"You really… really should be," she whispered, and Wally felt guilty and true and liberated, all at the same time.

▲▼▲

  
Things weren’t as different as he thought they would be after he kissed Artemis. There was no grand revelation, no fanfare, no credits rolling over a love song. There was no ending, nor beginning, nor defining point from which to continue on. She still had a tendency to refuse to let him get away with anything, to steal his snacks, to smack him upside the head, to tell him he was a moron, to make fun of his name, to frustrate him to the moon and back. The only large difference was that now he knew that he didn’t _need_ a reason to want her around – that she simply belonged. That he could _be_ , like Superboy said.  
  
Eventually, he learned to stop holding her so tightly. He learned to block the repeated visions of her dissolving into arctic tundra from his head. He learned to tell her that he was sorry, and that he understood. And she smiled at him, the way she never quite smiled at anybody else, and she learned how to say thank you and how to tell him the truth.  
  
“How come your hair’s always like this at night?” he asked her one evening in the middle of a movie through which they were both periodically dozing, tracing a finger down the length of her braid.  
  
“You said you liked it once,” she replied, sounding almost _embarrassed_. “I normally don’t braid it because it’s such a pain, but I figured I’d give you something nice to look at. Besides, y’know, my face.”  
  
“Whoa, whoa; you’re starting to sound like _me_ , babe,” he commented, attempting to conceal his utter joy at the fact that she’d been braiding it all this time for _him_. “That’s dangerous.”  
  
“Tell me about it,” she muttered, and she put one hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss him, and Wally forgot all about trying to come up with a winning retort.  
  
 _Supey_ , he thought giddily to himself, _you are my best friend ever._  
  
 _Let’s not get ahead of ourselves_ , Superboy thought back sharply, and Wally had to suppress a jump of surprise, because he’d forgotten that all thoughts were basically public domain at the Cave. _You can thank me later._  
  
 _Much later_ , Wally replied dazedly. Artemis was reclining on the couch now, pulling him along with her. _Much, much later_.

▲▼▲

  
 _See those stars shining in your eyes;_  
 _I know, I know._  
 _See those stars shining in your eyes;_  
 _I know, I know._  
 _I got, I got, I got to keep them there._  
— The Weepies, “Keep It There”


End file.
